Cabinet Office
Ladies and Gentlemen, its a pleasure to be here with you all today.
I would like to start by thanking the Institute for Government for hosting this event. In particular, thank you to Dr Hannah White for her engagement leading up to it. I enjoyed your blog and the recently released Whitehall monitor.
Today, I want to outline the next steps of civil service reform and how I will build on my predecessors work to make the Civil Service a lean, keen and productive machine.
But, before I look to the future, I would like to look to the past.
Modernisation and reform have always been a crucial part of the Civil Service.
In fact, the modern Civil Service was born out of a report f- as Im sure many of you know - from 1854, one that argued the case for urgent reform.
The Northcote-Trevelyan Report focused on creating a permanent Civil Service based on integrity and honesty.
Now, Im paraphrasing here, but the report ends by stating: Our priorities are, to provide efficient public servants, to foster merit, to overcome the fragmentary nature of the service.
To get the best people to encourage good work, to improve the structures of central government.
It could have been written yesterday, but actually next month that report celebrates its 170th anniversary.
I think these priorities will speak to the publics concerns. They want a public service that is easy to navigate, one where the best people are in the right jobs, where their lives are made easier by Government decisions.
Its these priorities that I will discuss today and how I will seek to help the Civil Service to achieve them.
Recent Change & Future Challenge
Now, the size of our Civil Service has always shifted.
It shrunk following the financial crisis after 2010, in 2016, it grew to deliver Brexit and it grew in 2020 to respond to the pandemic.
Its clear that if the world changes, the Civil Service must change, too.And this is right the public would expect an adaptive and agile service, one that can respond to the big challenges facing the country.
Just think of the Furlough scheme, the AI Safety Summit, or all the work thats gone into making us one of the highest performing education leaders in the world, these are significant achievements worth remembering.
It is also worth remembering the range of roles in the Civil Service.
They make up our government departments, agencies and public bodies, but theyre also the people who translate policies of politicians into action.
They work incredibly hard but crucially hard work does not always equal great productivity.
We must improve to keep pace with innovation in the private sector. For too long, productivity in the public sector has not been a high-enough priority, we have thrown more people at our biggest challenges, but have more to do to embrace the potential of technology and innovative ways of working.
As a recent Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I know that public finances are tight, they are always tight. Having established the Public Sector Productivity Review, I focused on squeezing every pound to deliver for taxpayers and I carry that focus with me in my new role in the Cabinet Office.
I know how important it is that the Civil Service cracks its productivity puzzle, because doing so will open the door to greater productivity across our entire public sector.
We can only afford a Civil Service that embraces innovation, especially when we consider the challenges ahead.
Demand for public services is growing not just because of the immediate cost-of-living pressures, but an ageing population means we need to carefully consider many of our policies.
The cost of running Government is also increasing tech costs more, and Government debt costs more to manage.
So, we have a public that is rightly expecting more, but it is also costing us more just to stand still.
As the Minister responsible for Civil Service reform, I am relentlessly focused on its future.
It is clear we have to do more with less, but I dont think its about cutting corners.
Its about being more productive. Its about encouraging the best possible performance. Its about bringing our people with us, to embrace the possibilities that modernisation brings.
Changes Already Made
Now, I hope Im not arrogant enough 10 weeks into the job to think Im the first to recognise these challenges.
My predecessors have set some fantastic work in motion already most recently Sir Jeremy Quin, and not least the inimitable Lord Maude and his series of reforms. I was happy to discuss this speech with him yesterday evening.
The foundation for my work is the Declaration on Government Reform led by Michael Gove in 2021, where all permanent secretaries and the Cabinet agreed a programme of reform.
It was an ambitious programme focussed on greater efficiency and productivity and weve already made some great progress.
Like merging 200 legacy IT systems into 5 corporate services.
And weve moved 16,000 London Civil Service roles into cities like Aberdeen, Cardiff, Wrexham and Belfast, making a Civil Service representative of the public it serves.
Thats all good, but whats missing?
For me, there are three areas we can focus on to accelerate Civil Service modernisation: embedding technology, embracing simplicity, and enabling peoples potential.
Embedding Technology
So, first, let me turn to technology.
My vision is that every single civil servant is either actively delivering or enabled by digital technology in their day-to-day job, whether thats eliminating bureaucracy. or coming up with new ideas to support our citizens.
Much of the focus is on how we in Government use AI, but I am clear that is not an inevitable solution.
AI will only work if its properly embedded, if its clear why and how were using it, and that civil servants get the right training and support to use it well.
Im pleased to say we are already taking exciting first steps to unlock the benefits of generative AI, ensuring that our AI teams are working with industry experts, in order to solve some of the public sectors most pressing problems.
Like launching AI pilots to make it easier for people to claim compensation in the case of criminal injury.
I believe better use of technology allows us to encapsulate everything that Ive already spoken about: powered by the right people, it will improve how we deliver to the public at lower cost.
For example: before, if you wanted to sign a mortgage deed, complete a DBS check, or manage your companys apprenticeship scheme, you had to sign in to each specific Government website, re-enter your personal details again and again and again.
So, we released a Gov.UK app that uses the One Login system, its already been downloaded 4.5 million times, and it has whittled 29 service logins down to just one sign-in process.
Its so successful were rolling it out to over 100 other services this year.
Its a great example of how we can better serve the public especially where they engage directly with public service.
Embrace Simplicity
But tech and artificial intelligence are not a one-size fits all solution to our issues, I believe there is a lot we can do by simplifying our processes.
Inevitably, the Government is and always will be a complex organisation. But I fear that now, its more complex than it needs to be.
Complex processes hide inefficiencies, simplifying how we work will make the Civil Service more productive, and will help us improve public services.
I want to acknowledge the work of my Ministerial colleague Esther McVey, who has come into her new post in the Cabinet Office to root out our inefficiencies.
She brings a refreshing clarity and analysis to how the Government works, a clarity which I and the public truly welcome.
It was a vision shared by Lord Maude, who also wanted to see improved accountability.
Today, we are considering ways to improve accountability in the Civil Service, including accountability to ministers.
The public expect no less, because they too want the processes and services they use to be more straightforward.
Take Universal Credit, for instance: it replaced a complicated landscape of multiple benefits administered by multiple organisations.
When we were delivering it, people were complaining it was taking too long, but we stuck to it, and steadily implemented it, and now, five years after its introduction, the change it has brought is remarkable.
It provided essential support throughout the pandemic rapidly, and will save 650m per year by 2027.
Now that was a big idea with big benefits and it didnt just happen.
It took the combined effort of civil servants, local councils, politicians and thousands more to make it work.
I pay tribute to them all, who over half a generation have transformed this complex service into a simple and productive one.
Projects like that demonstrate how our approach to policy development needs to change.
It needs to prioritise productivity as a goal from the outset, and ensure we are building an evidence base demonstrating which interventions work and which dont.
But its not just the public-facing work we need to reconsider we also need to re-evaluate the labyrinth of processes that make up the back office of government.
That means doubling down on the functional reform age